The usual academic's blog with posts about work/mom balance, along with a side dish of some occasional theological problems I'm working on...

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

My kid is a scissors genius...

I don't usually talk about her, but I do, in fact, have a 3 year old daughter. She is a great kid - funny and insightful, as well as being whiny, as with most kids - and to answer the question everyone has these days: yes, she is great with the baby and loves being around Baby G. Sometimes a little too close...

Yesterday, I went to pick her up from preschool and one of her teachers cornered me for a bit. "L. is over in the drawing area cutting valentines. I asked her if she wanted help and she said, 'No, I don't need your help.'"

Here, the teacher paused. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the pause. Apologize for my daughter's rudeness in reply? I thought probably no, because she is her own kid capable of saying "I'm sorry" herself, first of all, and this IS a professional teacher who knows that "I'm sorry" in three year olds is still something they're learning. But still, why the pause?

"Well," continued the teacher, "that's just way beyond where most kids are at this age." "Really?" I asked. I know very little about this age level, so beats me if that's true or not. But the teacher said, "Yeah - this is something we'd expect to see two or more years down the road."

Now, I will say I'm impressed. L. had never picked up a pair of scissors till a good family friend was trying to get her to make snowflakes two months ago. And here we are in February, and she's drawing and cutting (on the lines) hearts out of paper. She is clearly proud of this. I asked her this morning what she thought she'd do today and she said, "Make hearts!" Cool.

But I'll also say: what's an appropriate response to the teacher here? Or to L.? I decided not to make too big of a thing of it (didn't mention it to her at all, and really, couldn't think of a response to the teacher), because after all, it's not like on the basis of "Uses Scissors in Advanced Manner" that she can skip two grades or get into Harvard. I'm seeing it as a cool, quirky, interesting thing - that, yes, I also feel the need to brag about a little on my blog ;-)

1 comment:

Good for you for all of your responses: not mentioning it to your sweet girl, bragging a little to the folks who care on your blog, and not really saying much to the teacher. We get similar things sometimes at C's preschool and I'm never sure what to say, either. Seems rude to say, "Well I'm not surprised - obviously she's a brilliant child!" So I generally just say, "Well how neat!" and move on. There's too much pressure on even the tiniest kids to ACHIEVE things - I'm hoping we can just help our kids to find their gifts and have fun with them while they're so small.